Concept paper n°5 : Indicators to measure social protection performance. Implications for EC programming

This paper provides a critical overview of social protection indicators in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) context to support the European Commission’s (EC’s) decision-making on social protection indicators and to support decisions on how the EC can contribute to the global indicator discourse within its own institutional mandate and institutional priorities. It is not prescriptive in terms of the indicators that should be adopted, but rather, given the complexity and diversity of the factors that drive indicator choice, it provides an overview of the current process and development of social protection indicators as they relate to the SDGs, and discusses a range of indicators adopted by the main actors working on social protection.

This paper has three main objectives:

 ― to provide a critical overview and commentary on the development of SDG indicators and how they relate to social protection,

 ― to provide an overview of key social protection indicators used by multilateral and bilateral agencies to assess current coverage and gaps in measuring social protection at an international level and,

 ― to provide guidance on developing social protection indicators for use in EC programming, enhancing harmonisation between EC and SDG indicators, and promoting consistency/compatibility with indicators currently in use among key multi- and bilateral agencies.